Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

The odd things I do.

People who know me will probably be aware that I have (to put it mildly) something of an inferiority complex about certain things, one of which is my inability to do maths of a more complicated nature than "2+2=4". The main reason I dropped out of my university course all those years ago was that the maths was just too complicated for me to handle - after a while all those alephs and phis and integrals just kind of merged into a giant incomprehensible blur.

I have decided after a decade (as a kind of early new year's resolution) that ten years of kicking myself and feeling thick for not being good at maths is enough. Although it's been quite a long time since I've done any maths in anger, I just went to the college bookshop and bought a copy of Stroud. Anyone who's ever done anything maths-related at a university level will probably recognise this book - it's one of the best textbooks out there, period, and the diligent student who works through it doing the exercises as they go will generally end up knowing at least a little maths.

As it's a book (a huge heavy book, but a book nonetheless) it'll be a useful thing for some forthcoming long journeys and idle moments away from the computer. I'm perversely looking forward to brushing up my rusty maths skills and maybe, just maybe, conquering some of the difficult areas which defeated me before. Not that differential equations are something which I have to do on a regular basis, mind you, but I still think it's time to be able to say that I know how to solve them.